Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

What do you think is the most wonderful, enchanting, charming, or marvelous creature in folklore or legend or myth?

I think of the unicorn, but the truth is that the wondrous and enchanting unicorn is overwhelmingly a product of fantasy; in the folklore it was a wild and even savage animal.

But that still leaves me caught between the phoenix and the dove-maidens who can change between woman and bird (like the swan maidens, which come close, but I just like the dove ones better).

Mary wrote: "I think of the unicorn, but the truth is that the wondrous and enchanting unicorn is overwhelmingly a product of fantasy; in the folklore it was a wild and even savage animal...."

One of Charles Stross's "Laundry" stories (a modern scifi-ish take on Lovecraftian horror) has nasty, nasty unicorns: Equoid (available to read free @Tor.com)

Oh yeah, there's nothing to keep people from going back to the folkore. I used some of it myself in my unicorn story.

But it doesn't mean that the wondrous unicorn is not a fantasy creation.